Health & Safety Statement of Intent UK Guide

What this document is

A Health and Safety Statement of Intent is the written pledge that sits at the top of your company's health and safety policy. It's usually a single page, signed and dated by the most senior person in the business, setting out your commitment to protecting employees, contractors, visitors, and anyone else who might be affected by what you do.

Under section 2(3) of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, employers with five or more employees are required to prepare a written health and safety policy, and the statement of intent forms its foundation. A good statement will touch on your overall commitment, name the people responsible for making safety happen day to day, reference the systems you use to identify and control risks, and confirm that you'll review the policy regularly.

It isn't a risk assessment and it isn't an operations manual. It's the public-facing promise that everything else flows from.

How to use this document

1. Start with your commitment. Open with a clear statement that your organisation takes the health, safety, and welfare of everyone affected by its activities seriously. Keep the language plain. Avoid jargon. This first paragraph sets the tone for everything that follows, so it should read as a genuine pledge rather than a box-ticking exercise lifted from somewhere else.
2. Name the responsible people. Identify who carries overall responsibility for health and safety, which is typically the owner, managing director, or most senior officer. Then set out who handles specific duties below that level, such as line managers, supervisors, or a nominated health and safety officer. Naming roles rather than individuals keeps the statement useful when staff change.
3. Reference your management arrangements. Summarise how your business identifies hazards, carries out risk assessments, provides training, consults with employees, and records incidents. You don't need to explain each process in full here. The detail belongs in your wider policy. The statement just needs to confirm these arrangements exist and are taken seriously across the organisation.
4. Set out expectations for staff. Make clear that employees have their own legal duties too, including taking reasonable care of themselves and others, cooperating with the employer on safety matters, and reporting hazards or near-misses promptly. This section reinforces that health and safety is a shared responsibility rather than something imposed from the top down.
5. Sign, date, and commit to review. The statement should be signed by the most senior person in the business and dated. Add a commitment to review it at least annually, or sooner if there's a significant change in how the business operates. Display the signed statement somewhere visible to staff, such as a notice board or shared intranet.

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